BERG > NEXUS Project > Development page > Assessing Competencies
Basic Principles of Energy
Students will be able to:
- Recognize that energy (and entropy, etc.) are concepts that unify physics, biology, and chemistry, and the same basic physical principles can be applied in all three disciplines
- Analyze physical systems in terms of energy, identifying the relevant forms of energy
- Understand chemical energy as electric potential energy (with some kinetic energy thrown in)
- Describe chemical energy in terms of PE vs r diagrams
- Understand thermal energy as kinetic energy of molecules
- Use the Work-Energy Theorem to relate energy to forces
- Go back and forth between representations of potential energy and the corresponding forces
- Go back and forth between microscopic and macroscopic descriptions of forms of energy (e.g. understanding thermal energy as kinetic energy of molecules, and chemical energy in terms of electrical interactions)
- Identify energy transformations within a system
- Track energy into/out of a system to make sense of energy conservation